A Gentleman's Domain

Thursday Thirteen #61

Last week the lovely Di, at whose shrine I have been happy to worship these many months, did a TT on various firsts in her life.  Well, not being one to let a good idea go by unstolen, I’m doing the same this week. Here are thirteen firsts, not in chronological order.

  Thirteen Firsts In My Life

My very first job   The very first paid work I ever had in my life was when I worked for an off-licence (British for liquor store) for the 3 days before Christmas when I was sixteen.  I had to load boxes with various bottles and in some cases deliver them – mainly to local offices for their Christmas parties.  Apart from a few tips I got £5 which was pretty crap wages, even then.  On the last day, just after shutting up shop on Christmas Eve, the manager got everyone together and thanked us and passed out beer to us all.  I have always disliked the taste of beer but I didn’t want to seem ungrateful so I drank it. 

The first time I flew in a plane  I’m not sure how old I was, but probably about five or six.  We went to an air show somewhere outside of London and there was a small plane offering joyrides so my father bought tickets for the whole family and up we went.  I don’t remember what sort of plane it was, or how long we were up. I do remember that I wasn’t frightened but I found the whole experience rather uncomfortable.

My first stay in hospital  I only have very dim memories of this.  According to my parents, I was admitted to hospital with suspected appendicitis when I was five years old.  I was there overnight and discharged the next day when it was found to be a false alarm.  I have never been in hospital since.

The first article I wrote that was printed   I wrote a short piece, about half a page, for a vintage jazz specialist magazine when I was in my early twenties. In return I received a voucher copy of the edition in question and £10 (about $15 then), but I didn’t care about the money; I was just delighted to be in print.

The first car I ever drove on my own  It was a red Datsun 510.  Datsun, of course, has since become Nissan.  I rented it from Avis and drove round northern  British Columbia for a couple of weeks, when I was working there.

My first day at school  It was a Kindergarten in Hampstead, and I went when I was four.  Mornings only, I think.   For some reason the school term had already started when I had my first day, so the other children were already used to it.  I was very upset at first at being left there, but nice Miss Gauntlet gave me a jigsaw puzzle to do. It only had one big piece, so I was able to do it pretty quickly, and after that I moved onto something else and joined in the games with the others.

My first ever blog posting   It was this on, on 22 July 2006 and as far as I know, apart from my wife and myself, no one has ever read it.  The first person to comment at my blog was Mark Caldwell of Too Many Ideas, who sent the very first comment to my first TT last year.

The first time I rescued my wife when she locked herself in a lavatory   It was at St Mary’s Church in Banbury, to the north of Oxford, where we went on one of our trips to England to see a performance of The Elijah Passion by the local amateur operatic society.  It was surprisingly good, and we enjoyed the evening.  In the interval we both made use of the washrooms, and after I had done what I needed to do, my wife followed me.  I wandered off and came back a few minutes later to see that the queue had not moved at all and people were muttering that the lady seemed to be taking a very long time. And from the other side of the door I could hear my wife calling that she couldn’t open the door.  I don’t know how she had managed to lock herself in, but she had.  Anyway, remembering a trick from my old police days I managed to unlock the door from the outside and I released her.  Back to our pews, and on with the music.  It is a joke between my wife and me how often she gets locked in bathrooms, because she has achieved this several times over the years.

My first girlfriend   Well, a gentleman does not bandy a lady’s name of course, so she shall remain anonymous.  I was but 14 years old, on my very first few dates which, as far as adolescent nervousness and a few fumbles and kisses went, were very enjoyable.

My first cigarette  Smoked furtively in the kitchen, under the stove hood with the extractor fan going full blast, when I was fifteen.  After which I did my teeth for about ten minutes and scrubbed my hands like Lady Macbeth, convinced they were stained bright yellow.  And I didn’t even enjoy it so I don’t know why, many years later, I became a smoker.   I gave up a long, long time ago, I’m happy to say.  If anyone out there has not yet had a first cigarette but is contemplating it, take it from me – don’t bother!

The first time I went abroad by myself   When I was fourteen I spent 3 weeks working on the farm of some friends of ours in southern France.  So my parents saw me off at Heathrow airport and I flew to Paris (50 minutes) where I changed planes and flew another hour or so to Nimes, where our friends met me and I thought to myself what a trendy jet-setter I was!

My first arrests   A couple called Alan and Lynn, for stealing trainers (sneakers) from a store in a big mall.  I have written about that, and some other arrests, in a previous TT.

The first time I took a driving test   I was 17 and I wasn’t really ready for it but my driving instructor put me in for it for the experience.  The British driving test was, and still is I should imagine, very hard.  More people fail on any given day than pass.  I knew I was going to fail after the first few minutes but they make you finish the driving (about half an hour) however bad you are, unless you hit something.  Then came the speech about how “…your diving has not come up to the standards required by the Ministry of Transport…”  and I got the pink failure form. I took the test a total of three times before I passed. Subsequently I took, and passed, tests in British Columbia, which was much easier, and Florida, which was a total farce – once round the Dept. of Motor Vehicles building parking lot, and if you can do that without hitting a tree, you pass.

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Thursday Thirteen #60

For my very first Thursday Thirteen, over a year ago, I offered a list of things that I will ban when I rule the world.  I am still waiting to be offered the position of Lord High Emperor of the Universe, but while I prepare for office I have been planning.  I’ve got a little list.  Here are…

   Thirteen More Things I Will Ban When I Rule The World

People who chew gum with their mouths open.  There is no excuse for that.  I’m sure that from childhood they were told not to chew their food with their mouths open, so why should gum be different?  I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them think they look cooler, or more attractive, chomping away like that and inflicting upon us all that wet, crunchy squelching.

DVDs with trailers that you can’t fast forward through.  This can be infuriating if you pop a DVD into your player and before you even get to the main menu you have to watch trailers that can drag on for several minutes; and the bastards disable the fast-forward feature, so you have absolutely no alternative but to sit through them.  You can mute the sounds, I suppose, out of a sense of rebellion, but you still have to endure them. 

Wearing baseball caps backwards!  To me this is the height of moron-dom.  Anyone who wears their baseball cap backwards should have their head turned backwards!

Milk.  Yes, ok, I know it’s supposed to be good for you and all that.  Builds healthy teeth and bones and, no doubt, gives you a glossy coat and a cold wet nose if you really insist. But it really is disgusting.  I have never been able to stomach the stuff.  In fact, when I was in Asia, I was told on more than one occasion that they think Westerners  carry a bad smell around with them because they drink milk.  I can remember untold times, when I was a child, being offered milk by well meaning adults, and on several occasions having to drink it.  Milk shakes and chocolate milk are another matter, but ordinary cow’s milk, neat, is something I haven’t drunk for maybe 25 years or more, and I have no plans ever to do so again.  Still, I find that even when you’re an adult people will offer you the stuff.  Haven’t they heard of wine?  Okay, I won’t ban milk, but I will ban…

Badly made ring pull lids on cans.  It’s infuriating, isn’t it, when you want to open a can of something or other, and you lift the ring to peel the lid off, and it breaks, leaving you with the can in one hand and the ring hanging insolently from a finger of your other hand.  So you have to go find the pliers and try to tug the lid off that way, or else search for your can opener in the kitchen drawer and do it the old fashioned way: assuming that the can has a big enough lip round the top for the opener to grip.  I shall accept no excuses – for manufacturers of badly made ring pull cans, punishment will be swift and condign!

People who have loud mobile phone conversations in public.  Twenty years ago, when mobile phones were thin on the ground, people used to do this in an attempt to show how important they were.  They strode around inside restaurants, trains, shops etc, carrying phones the size of bricks, shouting inanities.  “Hello. I’m on the train.  Yes, it’s almost six o’clock.”    And then there were the people who carried on as though they were in their offices.  “Tell him he better get his arse into gear! I want that report my desk by nine tomorrow.”  Now that the whole world and his dog has a mobile phone, there is no kudos, real or imagined, in owning one, so there is no excuse for showing off with yours, but people still do.  For some reason, Starbucks seems very vulnerable to this.

Soap-on-a-Rope.  Do they still make this stuff?  There was a time when this was the Christmas and Birthday gift of choice for people, mainly men, when you had no idea what else to get them.  I wouldn’t have minded really except one year I ended up with no fewer than four of the things.  One, I recall, was in the shape of a rugby ball and another was a general purpose red blob. I’m quite happy never to see the stuff again.

Fat free. I admit, I used to be fooled by this. Same with low fat or, even worse, “lo fat”.  Aha, I thought, this must be a healthy alternative to the regular kind of TV dinner, hamburgers, yoghurt, fruit pie or any one of dozens of kinds of food.  I was wrong. What they do, to make up for the fat, is to pump in huge amounts of sugar, so there is no health benefit at all in low fat brands.  Probably just the opposite.

Also, Fun Size. Can someone tell me, where exactly is the fun in eating a miniature chocolate bar?  “Oh look, I’m eating a Kit-Kat that is only two inches long!  What fun I’m having!  It’s so much more enjoyable than those boring full-sized bars!” What it is, of course, is a way for the manufacturers to sell you less, but package it up as though you are getting something more.  Sometimes they call it snack size.  The actual harmful effect of these is that people eat lots of them, and consume far more sugar and fat, with all the attendant health risks, than they would if they were having a single full-sized bar, but they delude themselves that they are eating less.

I won’t ban the Oscars, the Emmys, the Baftas or the Golden Globes, because they do serve a purpose. But what I will ban, upon pain of lengthy terms of imprisonment, are those banal, inane, embarrassing spoken introductions that the presenters (usually in pairs) give before they get to the nominations for each category.

       “Hi Bob.”
       “Hi Susie, great to see you.”
       “Great to see you too, Bob.”
       “Y’know, Susie, without sound engineers, movies would be completely different.”
       “That’s right, Bob.  We depend on them totally for our lines to be heard by the audience.”
       “But y’know, the contribution that these unsung heroes contribute to the movies is often completely unrecognized by the public.”
       “Yes, Bob, and that’s a great shame because a skilled sound engineer can make an enormous difference to a movie.”
       “Well, Susie, why don’t we try to put that right by reading out the nominations for Best Sound Recording in a Motion Picture?”
       “That’s a great idea, Bob!”

I mean:  el mucho puko!

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, in other contexts, but I have to include it because I hate it.  Music, and other broadcast sounds, that are thrown at you, whether you want them or not, when you are a captive audience.  Loud muzak or TV in waiting rooms.  Whoever decided that people can not survive if they have to sit and wait quietly?  Ban it, I say!  Let people bring their own Ipods or CD players, with effective and non-leaking headphones, if they feel that without music for half an hour they will shrivel up and die.

Laugh tracks. Why do they have these?  Is there anyone out there who honestly will admit to needing audible prompts to tell him where the jokes are in a comedy?  Who needs to be told “This is a funny bit”?  I have never met anyone who told me that he appreciated a laugh track because without it he wouldn’t be able to tell where the jokes were.  They stripped the laugh track from M*A*S*H when they showed it in England and it didn’t suffer one bit.  The Wonder Years, in the 1990s, managed just fine without one, and it would be an absolute disfigurement if they added one to The Office, My Name Is Earl or 30 Rock, all of which are brilliantly funny without those added on noises.   It  is my understanding that the laughter on laugh tracks is mostly stuff lifted from live radio comedies of the 1940s and 1950s, so when you hear a laugh track you are in fact listening to a lot of dead people laughing.

Unnecessary packaging. It really annoys me to end up surrounded by a pile of paper and plastic debris after I have unwrapped something I have just bought.  I remember a while ago there was an attempt in England to organize a movement to take all unwanted packaging back to the guilty supermarkets and dump it there but I don’t know if anything ever came of it.

Pickles.  Yes, I know I had that in my first banning list, but I still want to eradicate these abominable, foul, disgusting things which masquerade as food.  Honestly, I saw people partaking of more appetizing food in “Zombie Flesh Eaters: Part  7”

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Not Well Met.

I posted a Thursday Thirteen a week or two ago about office-speak.  Several people were kind enough to comment and no one came to the defence of pretentious management twaddle.  There's a surprise!  I've had this in a dusty folder deep in the bowels of my computer for a year or two. I can't remember who sent it to me but whoever you are, thank you.  It is certainly accurate.  I'm sure most of us who have worked in offices have suffered through useless meetings which have been called to flatter the egos of managers who like to hear the sounds of their own voices.  I once worked with one who bought a telescopic pointer which he could keep in his breast pocket, pull out whenever he was giving a talk, extend to its full eighteen inches and point to various words he had written on his beloved flip chart, while the rest of us looked on through  glazed eyes and rapidly lost the will to live.
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